Dance/USA conference

We 'performed' at the opening reception of Dance/USA as background to a cocktail party performing short dance structures aimed to fit in and around the space. We put ourselves in a place where people were not meant to watch (catering staff doesn't count) but were there to talk with one another. Still trying to figure out what to say about it. We didn't push to get ourselves seen. We didn't try to dance right within the people as they were waiting at the bar or waiting at the food tables. (instead we danced outside the building looking in) It's the tree in a forest question - if nobody heard the tree fall, did it happen? If nobody saw the dance was it a performance?

(photo left: event at Holmes Run Greenway in Alexandria. We expected passersby to stop and watch, or pedestrians to pass through the event, as the bikers did above, but we weren't expecting actual audience attendance.)
Discussions with dance administrators at SmartBar provided some things to think about "a company of all women comes off as avocational," "exposure comes with attention grabbing situation," "free performance is an investment in audience-building," and most of all, I just sometimes didn't know what question to ask. "this copy is well-written and thoughtful, but you really need to work on your 'elevator' speech. I didn't really understand what your group was about until I talked with you for ten minutes."

what is showing

Recently in May and June we have been showing pieces for informal panels for Forward 5 of Dance/MetroDC and for 2010 Source Festival "Artistic Blind Dates." It has been productive and insightful making me think differently about motivations, and thinking about how very significant additions to pieces, may come about as solutions that perhaps don't make sense - and you have a feeling they don't make sense but you go ahead anyway with something that is really not what you are trying to get at. How do I resolve the music "issue" when I don't have a composer, or a solution for making sound? How can I step back from what I'm doing when there is time pressure, difficulties with getting people together and not enough time to not worry about time? I don't have any answers to that, but these showings have been a very honest and meaningful way to have pieces viewed and have some sort of discussion about them. I can't help but think that pieces that have been 'finished' always need reinvigorating or that performers that have been doing the same role for a while, constantly need the sort of feedback that will keep them interested and invested rather than just going through the motions.
(above Peg Schaefer and son Eliot from "Married Girl")

Jane Franklin Dance Indistinct Boundaries 11.8.09

Next?

We are working on a project for Source Festival Artistic Blind Dates with Matt Ripa and Brad Linde. It's to be presented the week of June 21 with 3 performances that week. We have a web site where you can post employment issues/experiences about losing a job/not being able to find work: "congratulations you have been laid off."

Benefit event is coming up on May 16 where we hope to attract friends and supporters to contribute to the 2010-11 Season. The evening should be nice - at Arlington Arts Center. Admission includes a light supper, wine tasting, silent auction and performances both inside and outside. If you would like to come join us, tickets are on sale at http://www.janefranklin.com/; or if you can't come but would like to help we are grateful for donations of any size which can be made on our web site at the same address.

And now for the biggest news -- the family has a new dog, and 7 goslings hatched in the creek at Holmes Run Greenway in Alexandria - you can lean over a footbridge and see them. The nesting geese were watched by many, many people who pass over the bridge daily, as the nest was built on a tiny island right near the bridge; and managed somehow to not get washed away in the spring rains. The promise of spring...

Reworking Work

We had a premier but certainly not a finish. Sometimes reaching a deadline is impossible, but there is no choice. After the first showing 'of Bones & Bridges' major rework has ensued. We started by altering the first section so we can introduce three major large pieces of pipe (which later are put together to form a bridge) and still have movement and text that enhances one another to explain the content of the work. These last few rehearsals are getting us closer to where I would like to go, and I am looking forward to the performances at Woolly Mammoth in April. After the concert at Source, which on many levels was a disaster, I look forward to actually going somewhere and feeling good about the outcome.
The group of older dancers, Forty + has continued to feel successful. We are now conducting workshops to explain/enhance and just bring forward issues that older people face. "Upstairs in the Attic" is about clearing out an attic, either in a home where you have lived for a long time, or a parents home. But the other part of it is just the joy of moving that come to anyone at any age. Age certainly can be a restriction. But everyone - and I mean everyone - must constantly adapt to all the changes the body has to offer.

dance and words

We are coming up to our performance at Source theatre, and at least a first showing of a new work, of Bones & Bridges. The idea behind the work attaches us to Four Mile Run Drive as a place where we rehearse, but also ties us to the ignored/mainly unrecognized potential of Four Mile Run. The dance contains references to the urbanization of the stream, the underground pipes, paving and covering over with buildings. The stream has changed from a natural stream to a widened and straightened drainage ditch (rapid response storm drain system). The small footbridge connecting Shirlington restaurant area to Nelson St/Four Mile Run Drive serves to link two very different communities. The bridge is important as a symbol of the meaningful connections that can be forged between people and to the land.
I find the piece to be a challenge but yet I know the project could continue. It is a taste of history. But as far as nuts and bolts, in the piece, it is sometimes hard to match what needs to be said in words, with dance, which is mostly an art form that expresses what is beyond words. This is the challenge, the simple pure content of the dance, versus the finding movement, sound, and references that can come alive.

Not enough time

We are preparing for our Woolly Mammoth Concert by bringing back some text based works (from the 2005-06 project 'Dancing the Page") and several others from before that time. Some of the older ones - like long time friend Kim Roberts' "The Floor is Sticky" - is really a new creation.
since it is holiday time, we'll have to make that all wrap together somehow, the time off that is greatly needed to spend with family and friends, and the getting the stuff completed. It always gets done somehow, or should I say there is really no end. Unlike a writer that meets the deadline and the work is published, there is always that temptation and need to keep altering dance pieces because the cast changes, and dance is just so of the moment that it seems necessary.
We are offering cheap ticket until the end of the month, so please go to the web site. We don't want to cancel a show because of low advance sales, so please let us know you are coming!
Happy Thanksgiving! and I'm enjoying "Across the Universe" (Julie Taymor) as I write...it the film that turned the Beatles songs into an anti-war type opera. It's a good one.